


Courtship in the Library

by seaweedredandbrown



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, F/F, Ficlet, Fluff, Gender or Sex Swap, Genderbending, Short One Shot, short and sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-13
Updated: 2016-01-13
Packaged: 2018-05-13 20:22:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5715856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seaweedredandbrown/pseuds/seaweedredandbrown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dwalin is a lot of things, but she is -not- scared. So why has she been standing in front of the library gates for the past few minutes? [ Inspired by an illustration on Tumblr - a thank-you ficlet for the artist. ]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Courtship in the Library

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HiddenKitty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HiddenKitty/gifts).



> A quick thank-you ficlet to HiddenKitty for accepting my drawing request last week! [Check her art out](http://ahiddenkitty.tumblr.com/post/136902651838/whats-sexier-than-librarians-nothing-nothing), it's very cute. 
> 
> Beta-read by the wonderful Tanouska, thank you again!

Dwalin, daughter of Fundin, was not known to be a coward. She was the Captain of the Guards of Erebor and an esteemed member of Queen Thorin's Company. In her time, she had faced Elves, Men, Goblins, Orcs, Wargs and countless other foes. It took quite a great deal to scare her.

And yet she stood there, in front of the library, unable to move. Her feet, which had sprung her towards charging beasts and armed ranks, stubbornly refused to budge. She found herself hesitating, unsure, nervous.

In a word: scared.

Scribes and other dwarrows were passing her by, coming in or out of the large gates of the library. They were doing their best not to enter her field of vision. Between her imposing stature and the blue tattoos adorning her head, she was used to glances and whispers. She ignored them with the absolute and complete lack of care that came with a life on the battlefield. She knew her worth and did not need their approval.

What she could not ignore were the increasingly worried looks that the guards, posted at each side of the corridors, were shooting her way.

The sight must have been quite unexpected: the bald dwarrowdam, dressed in her full warring attire, her fists clenched around an innocuous package, silent and still before the wooden gates.

Her armour glowed softly under the torchlight, her faithful Grasper and Keeper tightly strapped behind her back. Their blades had been sharpened and their handles sanded. She had spent hours polishing her gears, before scrubbing herself clean in her private bathroom, brushing her beard with care and braiding the remains of her hair.

Dwalin knew that she didn't have Queen Thorin's majestic mane or Gloin's wonderfully sculpted beard, yet she was looking the best she had in years, if she could say so herself.

What was it, then? She looked great, she was armed to the brim and yet there she was – scared. Maybe “scared” was not the right word for it, but then, words had never really been her thing. Balin was good with words, but there was no bloody way that her sister would help with this one. This was a battle that Dwalin had to fight on her own.

The guards were growing restless. Ugh. They were not permitted to talk to each other during their watch, let alone nodding in agreement and motioning towards her with their elbows. A clenched jaw and a stern glare might not be enough to calm those two. She would have to act.

Rumours said that she had once cut an inch of a rookie guard's beard for lacking discipline. If her reputation was the price to pay to maintain the calm in the city, then she would gladly be seen as moodier than the fire-breather itself... Except that, in this particular case, stomping in their direction and yelling them back into shape was technically running away from her fear... And if Dwalin did a lot of things without giving them much thought, running away was definitively not one of them.

The warrior took a deep breath and straightened her back. She marched forward, her hand clenched on the small package she had been holding onto for dear life.

To battle, she thought. To victory or to a glorious death.

This one was going to be a mess, she could tell. And it was going to be, as always, that damned thief's fault.

\- - -

“So, when are you going to do something about it?”

Watching Nori do her hair had always been something of a mystery. The way her braids just ran across her hair, from her neck to her forehead, had mesmerized Dwalin for as long as she could remember. Even Nori's eyebrows were braided, clad in her signature silver clasps. And they always looked perfect, hairs neatly entwined, not a strand let loose, be it in the middle of a chase, on the eve of battle, or, as was the case now, right after sex.

The thief was sitting on the edge of the bed, her nimble fingers twisting and weaving the threads with the expertise of a life-long habit. She had her back turned to Dwalin, who was still happily tangled in bedsheets and the smoke of her pipe, basking quietly in the afterglow.

They were in the captain's private chamber, deep within the mountain. The hearth was burning brightly, casting red shadows on the stone walls.

“Hey, are you listening?”

Dwalin blinked. No, she clearly hadn't heard of word of what the red-haired dwarf had said.

“Aye?”

Nori sighed and turned toward her lover, her hands working braiding magic somewhere above her left ear.

“I said; when are you doing to do something about it?”

“ 'bout what?”

Nori rolled her eyes and stopped braiding, strands of red hair falling astray on her forehead. Her hands came to rest on her lap, her green eyes locked on Dwalin's.

Ah. That smelled trouble, so the warrior pulled another breath from her pipe and did her best to look as uninterested as possible. That was the best way to stay out of whatever Nori had in mind.

Unfortunately, the thief had a detestable habit of not letting go of her thoughts.

“Look, I really don't mind this at all – it's fun and kinky and you're great but... I can tell, you know? That you're just taking me as a replacement for my sister.”

Dwalin choked on her pipe. How could she ever know... ? Oh, there was no helping it. After all, Nori knew everything.

She would deny it, though. Until her death, if she had to.

“Ain't nothing going on between Dori and–“

“Ugh, I'm not talking 'bout Dori, you idiot. I mean Ori. My younger sister, you know? The one you make cow-eyes at?”

“I don't make cow-eyes at anyone!”

Well, she hoped so, at least.

“ 'course not.”

“Wouldn't be proper, what with the age difference an' all.”

Arguments. Dwalin had never been good with those.

She could feel herself loosing already.

Nori chuckled.

“Like that's stopped you before.”

Time to try another strategy.

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Don't you want to be with your One?”

Nori shrugged.

“I don't really believe in that, you know.”

“How can you not believe in your One? Everyone's got one. Even Elves!”

Well, that wasn't really true and Dwalin knew so, but at least, that got Nori talking about something else. Victory had to be achieved at all costs.

“Well, maybe some of us don't, you know, and maybe that's okay too? I've always been the one closest to my mother – and Mahal, wasn't she a free spirit, that one. I can't really see myself with just one dwarf, you know?”

“Aye”, Dwalin answered, patting her friend's arm in sympathy.

She knew that the Ri sisters had issues talking about their family. That they didn't have the same father. That they had survived only thanks to Dori's sheer will after their mother had joined Mahal. That it had been hard. Hard enough to drive them apart from a while, until Nori caught up with them a few weeks before they left the Blue Mountains for what Ori had penned The Quest to Reclaim Erebor.

Dwalin knew and so regretted that the discussion took that turn. Nori was the lowest of the low, a filthy scum who waited for nothing but an occasion to steal, scam and deceive, but she was also her friend, a sister in arms and very good in bed. She hadn't deserved that.

Silence fell between the two. Nori wasn't looking at Dwalin anymore. Her eyes gazed somewhere in the distance, lost in her own thoughts. Voices could be heard from the corridor outside, guards greeting each others as two patrols came to meet on their respective route. Dwalin breathed in, ready to say something – anything, really, whatever would have come to mind to chase the sadness away from Nori's eyes – but woods creaked in the fireplace and that gentle sound seemed to bring back the thief to reality.

She giggled and pinched Dwalin's arm, who retreated in mock anger.

“Hey! What was that for?”

“Do you realise that you totally just admitted that my sister's your One?”

“What?”

“You totally did, do you know that?”

Nori clapped her hand gleefully, springing from the bed as Dwalin tried to grab her.

“No!”

“You totally did! Oh my, she's going to be so surprised!”

They were running now, Nori jumping and sprinting, braiding the remaining of her loose hair. Dwalin chasing after her, naked and flustered, bumping into her furniture as the thief avoided her grasp.

“You don't tell her nothing!”

“I'll tell her what I want! Oh, Dori's going to love this. You know what? I'm gonna tell Dori first. She'll probably the happiest, ever!”

That almost stopped Dwalin right in her track. If the prospect of talking to Ori in such fashion was jarring–

“She'll want to meet you right away!”

–Confronting Dori was the stuff of nightmares. The eldest Ri sister was, after all, the strongest of all dwarves in Thorin's Company. It was a good thing that she was also the most polite and mild-mannered. Dwalin had seen what happened to suitors – perfectly respectable Dwarves at that, too – who had approached her little sister a bit too close, and it had not been pretty.

“Nori, you scoundrel, you come back right here where I can hit you!”

“In your dreams, old woman!”

Nori wouldn't let herself be cornered; swiftly collecting her belongings from the room, and probably a good deal of Dwalin's as well.

One moment she was almost in the warrior's arms, almost captured, almost surrendered; and the next she was at the door, her coat already back on, her fingers on the handle and a mischievous smile on her lips.

Dwalin admitted defeat, grumbling swears into her beard while frantically looking for her tunic and the remains of her dignity.

“I know that I wouldn't mind.” She heard Nori say, as she was fighting her way through her clothes. “We wouldn't see each other again that way, it's true, but it'd be a small price to pay. Oh, don't worry, Dwalin, I understand. It's okay to be scared.”

The thief slammed the door quickly enough to dodge the dagger sheath Dwalin had thrown at her.

Her laughter echoed through the wall.

Scared.

Dwalin was not scared.

Very well. She was not scared. And she was going to prove it.

\- - -

Almost two weeks later and there she was, in front of the library, her heart pounding in her chest and a thin layer of sweat moistening her palms.

Two weeks wasn't that long compared to the years and months she had spent watching Ori from afar, denying the true nature of her feelings.

Her reluctance boiled down to two very simple obstacles.

First, Ori deserved only the best partner she could find, and Dwalin was not really sure she could be that one. Obviously, she had nothing to be ashamed of as far as fighting prowess went, as well as a good name and the honour of her clan. And that... was pretty much all she had to offer, really. She wasn't bad at her craft, but she was far from the best. She didn't know how to talk with sweet words that gleamed on the tongue, like gems under the moonlight. She wasn't as regal as Thorin, as cheerful as Fili and Kili, as smart as Oin or as brave as Bilbo.

All she was was strong but Ori didn't need that. As the events of their quest had shown, Ori had a strength of her own. There was a fierce dwarven soul under the knitted scarf and the ink-spattered hands, a heart of stone and metal beating within her chest.

Then, there was Dwalin's involvement with the dwarrowdam's very own sister. Even if said connection had been kept mostly secret, Balin and Dori would have fits over how improper that was. No, not to sleep around, that wasn't very much their concern – but to court someone who's kin she had been with, well, that was another level of impropriety all together. Dwalin could only take comfort in the fact that Nori's parting words had been clear on that subject.

If Nori hadn't said anything...

But Nori _had_ said something.

She had said she didn't mind to see the captain courting her sister... and that it was okay to be scared.

Not scared. Definitively not scared, Dwalin reminded herself, as she walked into the room, the heavy stomp of her steps echoing beneath the high ceiling.

Books, books and books, everywhere she looked. Books on shelves, books on tables and books in piles on the floor. Books in hands of dwarrows quietly walking from one section to the other. Books and dwarrows alright, but no signs of Ori, daughter of Mori.

Dwalin could have stopped one of the librarians and asked, but she didn't necessarily want the motive of her visit to be known. You could be sure that at least half of them little scribblers would go and report such a strange sighting – Lady Dwalin herself, armour and all, lost in the library – and Balin would have a field day with it.

Therefore, she made a good show of pretending to know where she was going. Which she didn't, obviously, but looking like you knew what you were doing was a very useful skills of hers.

She finally found her young friend hidden behind yet another row of bookshelves, her mitten-covered hands reaching out to replace a book between two of its brethren. Dwalin stopped before letting her presence be known, letting herself relish the moment.

Ori looked nothing short of adorable. This was not the first time that Dwalin had seen her in a frock, but it took her breath away nevertheless. She had traded her journeying clothes for a long purple dress that fitted her petite silhouette rather well, beneath a darker coat threaded with copper and brass. She was wearing her favourite belt, a large leather band adorned with garnet, which had been part of her share as a member of the Company. Dwalin had often seen her bearing that belt since she had started working in the library, the gems complimenting her chestnut eyes, elegant yet sober.

They had not spend much time with each other lately, what with the city to rebuild and all, so Dwalin was only noticing now that Ori had let her hair grow. It suited her well. She would usually tie it in a bun, ornamented with braids that ran all around her face – nothing like Dori's or Nori's, yet still the same, hair and beard seamlessly linked in red-haired wonder, bright gems, pearls, and metal clasps gleaming like veins of gold through the mountain.

“Oh, Mistress Dwalin, hello! I'm sorry, I didn't see you there.”

Her voice rang like hammers on an anvil, white-hot iron sparkling in Dwalin's ears. The captain stepped forward, clenching her jaws.

Nori had been wrong. She wasn't scared. She was _terrified_.

“Morning to you, Ori. How are you doing?”

She spoke without a tremor in her voice, the low drawl contrasting with the vivid rhythm of her friend's answer.

“I'm doing great, thank you.”

The librarian was smiling and immediately started to give her a run-down of her latest activities, her eyes sparkling with excitement.

“The deeper parts of the library have now been cleaned of most rubble and we've properly started curating the new collections. It's incredible how many of those books are still in proper, reading condition!”

“Good. That's good.”

Silence ensued. Ori smiled again and Dwalin answered with a smile of her own, her fingers twitching against the package. Words were screaming under her skull, thrusting up her throat, clashing against the back of her teeth. Words, words, words. Never really her area.

“So... did you need anything... from the library, ma’am?”

“No, just wanted to see how you were faring, is all.”

Which was already something better than “nay, just wanted to admire the scenery” or “wait, I think the guards are calling for me somewhere on the other side of the city”.

Oh, Mahal's hammer, she didn't even know how to do it, did she?

Silence again. Ori may or may not have said something to the tune of “oh, that's very kind of you”. Dwalin was only half-listening, furiously looking for an appropriate way to breach the subject.

A casual “See, lass, I was wondering...” wouldn't do.

Kneeling down and bowing was completely out of the question. This was a permission of courtship, not a wedding proposal, by Mahal's beard.

Between those two extremes, there must have been something – some sentence, some phrase that people knew to use in such circumstances but that Dwalin didn't.

She had never regretted so much not paying more attention back in her dwarfling days. Her old teachers would have known. Perhaps there could have been a song, or some verses that would have reminded Ori of whatever ballad that could have won her heart.

Yes, poetry, Ori would have liked that.

But Dwalin was no poet and now the silence was growing uncomfortable between the two of them.

Slowly, another emotion crept in. Worry. Now that she was observing her – really observing her, not just admiring her beauty or foolishly dreaming of the taste of her lips, Dwalin could tell that Ori didn't look well. She was smiling, indeed, but she was also pulling on the seam of her mittens, balancing her body from one foot to the other.

Concern shook the warrior out of her petty hesitation. Was Ori having a bad day? Did someone say something to her?

If that was the case – if anyone had said or done anything that had made Ori unhappy in any way – Dwalin was going to find out and have _words_ with that person. Whoever it was.

“Something the matter?”

“Oh, no, nothing. Nothing at all.”

Ori blushed and nodded hastily, which only confirmed Dwalin's doubt. Something wasn't right.

“If there's anything–“

“Actually, I–“

They spoke at the same time. Ori chuckled, Dwalin smiled and nodded, eager to let her talk.

“Actually, there's something, yes. Just... give me a moment, alright?”

Dwalin nodded again, containing her impatience. Ori disappeared behind a bookshelf, returning shortly with her satchel. The petite dwarrowdam breathed deeply before taking a small package out of her bag. She reached out to Dwalin, presenting her the packet with trembling hands.

“Dwalin, daughter of Fundin!” She squealed. Her eyes were getting red and misty. Dwalin felt her lips parting in surprise, her jaw moving without her consent. “I am Ori, daughter of Mori. Will... will you please allow me to court you?”

Ori winced but didn't look back, clapping her mouth shut and... visibly expecting... something.

An answer, Dwalin. She expected an answer. But the warrior was, not unusually, at a loss for words.

Did Ori just ask for her permission to court her?

Thoughts came twirling to her mind, from “Wasn't this supposed to be the other way round?” to “Perhaps Dori's not going to try and beat me senseless, after all”, but she ignored them. She was good at that – acting instead of thinking – and so she silenced the whirlwind of her brainstorm, grasping Ori's shoulder with her free hand and slowly bringing their foreheads together.

Ori's skin was soft and warm against hers, a sensation as sweet as she had imagined it to be. And her eyes were pure and wide, brown with a hint of gold, like tiger's eye and citrine quartz.

“Yes.” Dwalin answered simply, as Ori's breath softly caressed her lips. “Yes, I allow you to court me.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you have enjoyed what you've read, feel free to let me know! Critics are more than welcome as well, as long as they are constructive. :)


End file.
